A photographic history...

This is the earliest known photograph of me. It's April, 1957, and I am 9 months old. This is Mrs Willis, of Blackburn St, Radcliffe, who lives in the newsagent shop under our flat.

Here I am in Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria, in August 1957. I am 11 months old. The girls are all (I think) daughters of Tony Denny, a coach driver that bacame a friend of the family since meeting Mum on a works outing to Blackpool.

I'm not sure how old I am in this series of pictures, except for the one in the snow dressed up as Captain Ahab, by the look of it. I was two-and-a-half.

Here's me and my sister Elizabeth. I think that if Mum had a Barbie and Ken she might have not have felt the need to dress us like this! As for the sore finger, I had probably been sticking it somewhere I shouldn't, but that's kids for you!

So that's why were putting on our Sunday best! Here we are at our Auntie Rhoda's and Uncle Harold's, with cousin Willie. Also there's a picture of me where, unusually, I have been allowed to let my hair down.

Here's a picture from the local newspaper, the Radcliffe Times. I'm the smooth dude with the greased-back hair. Elizabeth is the one at the front. We're at the yearly fair put on by the East Lancashire Paper Mill, where my dad worked, watching a Punch and Judy show. For those of you who are unaware of this somewhat mediaeval culural phenomenon, it's a box housing a guy with a bunch of glove puppets, who perpetrate mindless violence upon one another, within the framework of a formulaic, yet unfathomable, story. Like TV, I guess. The guy in the pram is my brother, Mark. Elizabeth and I often used to wonder where he came from! He just appeared one day with his flash wheels, the new kid on the block.

Here's a picture taken on a hot summer morning, just before I went to school. The dustbin, carefully placed on the left of the picture, heightens the drama of the composition.

We now have a new addition to the family - a dog. Or is it a pyjama case? The second picture, taken in the mid-sixties, is the first family holiday we ever went on. In fact, the only family holiday we ever went on. It's at the Butlin's Holiday Camp in Clacton, Essex. Butlitz, more like! Judging by the composition (see photo of dustbin above and the threesome below) I know that Dad took this picture!

Here's the three of us, being photographed in our Sunday best again. Something of a recurrent theme, I think! Perhaps we only borrowed the smart clothes, went out in them to Sunday School, then sent them back to the shop! The second picture is either candy floss (cotton candy) or a severe fungal infection in my finger.

Here we are again, modelling this season's childrenswear range. Liz appears to be anticipating how fat her face is going to get when she hits puberty. She is underestimating! The second picture is Liz, Mark, Dad, Gran (ie Dad's mum), and me, trailing at the back. This is because we are just arriving at church, where I am to be baptised. I am not happy, because I have no choice in all of this.

Here I am in about 1968, with Martin Ingham, from my class at school, at John Doyle's house. John is trying out his Polaroid camera.

     

I don't know what I can add to explain these two dreadful pictures, taken, in or around 1972. That makes me about sixteen. I guess I can just blame it on the decade that good taste seemed to pass by!
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